President of the EU council Donald Tusk has rejected Boris Johnson’s requested to strip Irish Backstop out of the Brexit deal, suggesting the UK is simply refusing to admit there is no realistic alternative.

In response, Number 10 issued a statement decrying the lack of diplomacy from the EU after their repeated attempts to reach out to them “We’ve called the EU hypocrites, un-elected bureaucrats, Jeremy Hunt compared them to a soviet prison and Boris Johnson himself compared their actions to Hitler AND Neapolean.” Top Tories admitted that after this sustained charm offensive failed, they were now at a loss how to handle the EU negotiator’s unreasonable stance.

Pointing to further evidence of the UK’s willingness to make some reasonable capitulations, the statement referenced the government’s reckless attitude to the Irish backstop “We’re more than willing to utterly compromise the Good Friday agreement through abandoning the Irish backstop in the goal of a workable trade deal.”

“To show just how committed we are to this, we’ll be fielding no questions in relation to how this is actually achievable without the massive destabilisation of Ireland.”

On the subject of the Irish border issue, the EU responded “We note that (Johnson’s) letter does not provide a legal operational solution to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. It does not set out alternative arrangements.”

At press time, it is understood Number 10 responded “Yeah, fair point. BUT at least we’ve taken the current Brexit secretary into a room and very slowly explained to him that things come in and out of our country from a place called Dover. The last guy could never get that… Also, even if the IRA has a bit of a comeback we’ve got a great bombs and hard borders tagline. Should play well in the Daily Mail.”